Few weeks ago we had once again just perfect weekend, which provides an insight into how lovely city Helsinki can be. In the timespan of few hours we managed to include great foods, watching sports, high culture plus sun and laughter. What else could one hope for?

But let pictures tell more.

Our morning started at Hotel Glo with a lovely breakfast. Though Glo breakfast is not like The Best Of Finland-breakfast at Klaus K – it was more than decent and provided as the opportunity to also read weekend newspapers and drink more apple juice than is healthy. Thanks to City shoppari-card ( http://www.cityshoppari.fi/html/ ) we paid only 16,80 for the breakfast for two.

After getting our stomachs full, we went out for culture – heading to the Ateneum museum.

The exhibition we wanted to see was The Magic of Lapland -exhibition:

But we actually liked much more about the Finland Calling – Aho & Soldan exhibition, which showed photos and films about Finland from the first half of the century.

It was actually a humbling experience to see the life of previous decades in such visual format and appreciate how much previous generations have done to make life these days much more easier and bearable.

We also visited the Ateneum collections, where some of the most famous finnish paintings from Hugo Simber, Helen Schjerfbec, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Albert Edelfelt are shown to the general public. Don’t know whether I was genuinely moved again by those works of art or was it the slight fewer I had, but I almost could feel a tear coming to my eye while watching some of those works and reading about them. Especially the letter from Hugo Simberg to his sister after his painting Wounded Angel got fair recognition and great appreciation from fellow artists and from his masters.

After art it was time to eat again, and we wanted to see something new. Hence to local copy of Vapiano called Bravuria.

Bad carbon copy with more expensive meals and worse tasting food. Not going there again anytime soon.

So we went to Cafe Lasipalatsi. Though sparkling wine was tempting, we opted for something else.

Chocolate cake and lemonade!

After dessert we headed down to museum of modern art, Kiasma.

.. where they had a DJ playing and had a small beach with chairs for people to sit on.

Interesting concept from the URB festival. How to make museum also more approachable and interesting for people who pass by.

Get a DJ to play music!

Loved it. Kiasma was also quite packed, so we just went to the bookstore and decided to come to the exhibitions later.

After Kiasma we went to see beach volleyball tournament at the railwaystation. Yes. At the main railwaystation. At the square by the railwaystation, right by the bus stops people had built a mobile beach volley stadion and during the weekend had the finnish championship finals there with live crowd and live TV-broadcast.

If you haven’t seen beachvolley played in live… I recommend to see it someday.

As it is quite fast paced and spectator friendly sport.

The stadion was packed, so we did not watch the finals ’till the end, but left before the matched were over.

Just to give some perspective on the seasons of life in Helsinki, in just few months there will be an ice rink at the same place where the beach volley stadion was positioned and people all around Helsinki – as well as numerous tourists – skating around in the heart of Helsinki.